Seven women reflect on the emotional cataclysm of World War II in Gaylene Preston’s landmark contribution to Aotearoa’s collective memory, which has lost none of its raw power on its 30th anniversary.
Takes a simple idea and turns it into a rich, universal experience… full of alternately warm, romantic, harrowing and tragic tales.
War Stories Our Mothers Never Told Us 1995
When young New Zealanders were mobilised as soldiers and sent across the globe to join the frontlines of Britain’s fight against Nazi Germany, the turbulence of the Second World War travelled back into South Pacific living rooms. Distance and death became everyday realities for Kiwis at home – and caused griefs that were at times taboo and suppressed.
Gaylene Preston frames seven women, including her own mother, against a black background that creates a stage for their candid, unadorned and surprisingly intimate wartime recollections, as they look back from the 90s in interviews conducted by oral historian Judith Fyfe. The acclaimed documentary, which combines these shared testimonies with personal photographs and newsreel clips, conveys the immense pressure to conform to the value of stoic sacrifice for the cause under the scrutinising eye of neighbours, and reveals lesser-seen layers of resilience.
Marriages in the first flush of romance were cut short, pregnancies were navigated alone, conscientious objectors were met with ostracisation and American servicemen scorned, in a nation united around support of their boys in combat overseas – a state of affairs in which women were often granted little voice, as they took on more labour, and absorbed life-changing losses. — Carmen Gray